Midweek Message: For Holy Week

for Ankara and Istanbul,for Paris,for cycles of violence that offer no redemption.For San Bernardino, Roseburg, Chattanooga, and Charleston,for public places filled with private fears,for justice to roll down like waters.For elections, and primaries, and caucuses,for entrusting our security and salvation to institutions that can guarantee neither,for destructive rhetoric, constructive only in building up divisions.For relationships,for heartbreak, hardship, and hurtful words,for covenants broken,for wayward children and hurting parents,for loneliness.For private pain,for shadows and darkness,for grief and loss,for joy that is absent, and peace that is elusive.For Holy Week,for calloused feet and dusty soles,for spiritual amnesia,for our ability to betray, and our inability to stay awake,for the stripes we impose, and the thorns we inflict,for long silence,for longing in silence,for stones too hard to move.Hosanna,Lord, deliver us.